Rick Cook - The Wizardry Cursed

"backslash"

"?" the Emac responded.

"blackwatch exe"

The Emac gabbled and several dozen demons appeared on the table. They were fashioned like men but each wore a skirt and shawl of dark green patterned with black. Several had drums and the rest had odd contrivances with several shiny black tubes extending over their shoulders. The leader carried a silver-tipped staff near as tall as he was and wore an enormous hat made of some black fur.

"Give them ’The Black Bear,’ " Judith commanded. "Then ’Scotland the Brave,’ ’The Highland Brigade at Maggersfontein,’ ’The Southdown Militia,’ ’The Earl of Mansfield’ and ’Lord Lovett Over The Rhine.’ After that use your imagination."

The tiny drum major nodded, turned to the demons behind him and raised his staff. The pipers inhaled as one, the drummer struck the beat and the skirl of the pipes reverberated off the stone walls.

"Let’s see them even think through that," she said viciously.

"I hope it is as effective on the enemy as it is on us," Bal-Simba boomed over the noise.

Judith looked up and realized everyone in the command center had stopped work and was staring at the table. Several of them had clapped their hands over their ears. Judith made a gesture and the sound died to a whisper.

"Sorry Lord, I keep forgetting it’s an acquired taste."

By the time Malus’s dragon approached the castle the fat little wizard was half-seasick and thoroughly miserable. Normally a dragon could not carry two people for very long. But the wizards had added their magic to the animal’s natural flying ability so they were able to keep up with the other dragons.

Not that it was much comfort to Malus. He was strapped into a second saddle back on the dragon’s shoulders. The beast was too wide to straddle comfortably at that point and the insides of his thighs ached terribly. Although the straps holding him to the saddle were secure, the saddle itself had a tendency to shift alarmingly whenever the dragon maneuvered suddenly. For Malus’s taste there had been far too many sudden maneuvers. The blue robe of the Mighty, which was so impressive on the ground, was totally unsuited for dragon riding. The wind tugged at the hem and tended to flip it back above his knees. The cold air whipped up the robe and around his legs. Probably the only part of him that was still warm was his seat, which was protected by the saddle. But he couldn’t tell for sure because it had gone to sleep long since.

He tried to shut out the discomfort by concentrating on the back of the rider and not looking down. Above all, he didn’t want to look down.

The castle erupted in flame and smoke as every weapon fired on the attackers. Artillery and mortars of every description fired and fired again as fast as the automatic loaders could feed them. Streams of tracers fountained up into the sky as anti-aircraft batteries sought their targets. Lines of laser light swept back and forth over the plain and sky.

Between the killer bees and the messed-up control system in the southern quadrant it wasn’t nearly as effective as it should have been. What ought to have been annihilating was merely deadly. Men went down like tenpins and dragons fell from the sky under the impact, but still the others pressed on.

From ground and air the attackers returned fire. Lightning bolts and fireballs flew from the wizards’ fingers destroying emplacements and blinding sensors. Then two squadrons of dragons peeled off and let fly with heat-seeking missiles. The missiles went for the hottest things in the castle, which were the barrels of the artillery and the firing tubes of the lasers. A series of explosions blossomed on the castle walls and here and there the secondary explosion of a magazine made a section of castle wall bulge outward and slump.

Still the attackers came on.

Circling above the battle Malus groped in the sleeve of his robe and brought out a crystal sphere just large enough to fit comfortably in the palm of his hand. It was held in a net that was tied to his wrist so he would not lose it and the netting made it harder than normal to concentrate. Still the picture was clear enough.

Peering into the crystal he saw that there were a number of other things in the air, but little enough magic.

Fumbling in his other sleeve he produced a light hazel wand. It wasn’t as powerful or as impressive as his normal staff, but it was much easier to handle on dragon back. He kept his eyes fixed on the crystal as he raised his arm above his head and began to chant.

Craig’s screen started to fill with magically generated hash. He quickly applied a filter function to the image and some of the interference faded, but what was left pulsed rhythmically and seemed to beat against itself like a badly tuned instrument, creating irregular patches of dark and light on his screen.

The magical sensors were worse. The screen filled with glowing blobs of amorphous color that made it look like a neon lava light. Craig swore under his breath and started combining the output of various kinds of sensors and tinkering with filters until he got his best picture.

Vaguely Craig realized he hadn’t been smart in setting this system up. Everything flowed back to his command center, but he could only concentrate on a few facets of the battle at one time. There was too much happening for him to coordinate the defense. He would have to rely on the sensors and programming built into his warbots and other weapons. Which was fine, only there was no way for those weapons to coordinate without direct orders from his command center.

Still, he had a lot of weapons.

"What’s going on up there?" Gilligan demanded.

Karin shaded her eyes and squinted. "I cannot see. No, wait! Those are dragons. Ridden dragons and they are attacking." She looked at Gilligan. "Those are my people."

"Can we signal them?"

"They are too high and too fully engaged." She picked up her bow and started back toward the castle. "Come on. We must help them."

"How?"

She looked over her shoulder. "We will think of something, now come if you are coming." She trotted off with Stigi humping along beside her. Gilligan had to run to catch up.

Thorfin looked at his leader’s boot soles and scowled. It seemed as if they had been climbing for hours. First up the steep outer wall, then in through a gun port and finally up through the castle’s ventilation ducts. There was plenty of room, but the wind was almost strong enough to pluck a dwarf from the wall and every few hundred yards they had to unfasten a grating that blocked the duct. Twice they had narrowly avoided the whirling blades of huge ventilation fans that threatened to turn the whole expedition into dwarf tartare. And still they climbed onward. Glandurg stopped every few minutes to check his locating talisman, but it always told them the Sparrow was above them.

I never realized glory was such hard work, Thorfin thought as Glandurg missed a foothold and kicked him in the face.

"Look," said Jerry. "Do you have any idea where we are?"

The four of them were standing at the crossing of four identical corridors. There were no floor numbers, room numbers or anything else to give them a clue.

"One of the upper floors of the castle," Wiz told him.

"In other words we’re lost, right?"

"No, I know where we are. I just don’t know where the computer is."

Jerry growled. "Okay, let’s do this systematically. Lannach says the computer is in the room where you met Craig and Mikey, right?" Wiz nodded. "We know the room has an outside wall because it had a big window, right?" Again the nod.